Pope Leo has arrived in France for the first papal state visit in 18 years, touching down at Paris Orly airport on Friday, 25 September 2026. The trip begins in Paris today and comes with a packed agenda that includes repairing the Catholic Church's standing after abuse scandals in the country, delivering a landmark speech on AI development at Unesco, and talking about Europe's future in Metz - where some other European leaders are expected to attend, presumably to hear what the Pope thinks about the continent.

He will also visit the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the famed Catholic shrine in Lourdes, among other places. Because if you're going to do a papal visit, you might as well hit the greatest hits.

Meanwhile, French president Emmanuel Macron met with Pope Leo this morning and hosted him at the Élysée Palace, but will not attend tomorrow's mass at Place de la Concorde in Paris. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy said the decision was Macron's personal choice, adding that he would have attended if he were still in office. "Some say that in the name of secularism, he shouldn't go. That doesn't make sense: secularism is a right, a right to believe or not to believe," Sarkozy said, quoted by BFM TV - a sentence that manages to be both a defense of secularism and a subtle dig at his successor.

Macron, for his part, had a busy Thursday night. He gave a rare prime time TV interview on TF1 and France2, denying media reports from Spain that the US Central Intelligence Agency warned Paris of a potential Russian strike across southern Europe from the Mediterranean. "I can deny it. The CIA did not inform French services," he said. He did, however, repeat his warning about Russia's "growing" hostile activities in Europe, noting that all sensitive sites in France are subject to additional protection. He also said any ban on US diesel exports backed by president Donald Trump would be a "bad" decision, including for the US economy - a diplomatic way of saying "please don't."

Elsewhere, updates from Ukraine and across the continent continue. It's Friday, 25 September 2026, and this is Europe Live.